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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Deadliest-er Warrior: Wicked Witch of the West and Indiana Jones

Heroes need villains—otherwise how would we know they were heroes? Just think, Clark Kent would have remained a dork, and never would have been able to show off his underwear in public. But villains don’t really need heroes, except that movies would be kind of dull without them. The Big Bad Wolf wouldn’t huff or puff—he’d just make himself a ham sandwich. Snore. So, movies always have both, and what I want to do is see what would happen if a hero from one movie faced a villain from a different movie. Would our universe still survive? Let’s see …

Indiana Jones crosses paths with The Wicked Witch of the West

In an undisclosed location, Indiana Jones is sauntering through (in a very Han Solo kind of way), when The Wicked Witch of the West comes strolling by (in a very Hermione/ Sabrina/ Ursula/ Crucible/ Maleficent/Eastwick kind of way). Their eyes meet, and then Indy notices that she is holding the ruby slippers. “Those,” he says with a surprising amount of zeal, “belong in a museum!”

“Funny,” she says, “that’s where I just stole them from.” She lets out a cackling laugh, but considering Jones is willing to take on an entire fascist totalitarian regime over stuff like this, WWW knows she’s in trouble. Jones pulls out his gun, and demands that she hand over the little glittery slippers, but she refuses and then breaks out into song. He aims and fires, but she disappears in a cloud of red smoke, just in time. Then “Poof!” she reappears somewhere else, he turns and fires, she poofs again, he fires, she poofs, repeat. Eventually Indy runs out of bullets. (His shoulder bag could contain extra bullets, but no one actually knows what’s in there.)

To get her to stop poofing, he points at the sky and yells, “House!” She jumps back in fear. Angry at being tricked, she points to the ground and yells, “Snake!” making him jump. That’s when she realizes Jones no longer has a long range weapon, so she starts throwing fire balls. Unfortunately she throws fire so slowly that Indy, little dogs, scarecrows, and even a turtle with a bum leg could get out of the way in time. This gives Indiana time to pull out his whip, wrap it around her broom, grab it, and hop on. Fortunately he is qualified to ride, drive, and fly any form of transportation in the universe. He swoops down and grabs the slippers out of WWW’s hands, but misjudges the landing (he’s not good at those), and crashes.

She’s had enough, and calls down her flying monkeys to attack him. He grabs his whip again, wraps it around a conveniently placed log on the ceiling, swings, lands, and the whip somehow untangles itself from the log immediately. Indy then runs behind a pillar, waits, and grabs the first monkey that comes by. He knocks it out with one punch, and then exchanges clothes with it. Then he comes out from behind the pillar wearing the flying monkey uniform, and for some reason no one can tell it’s him. This allows him to walk right up to the Witch and punch her too.

Lying on the ground, she fears he’ll finish her off. He, however, steps back to wait for her to get up, so he can punch her again. Instead, she pulls out her crystal ball, rubs it, and makes poison ivy grow all around him. (She would have grown poppies, but it looks like it might snow, so she switched gears.) As he starts scratching like crazy, she grabs her broom back. The Wicked Witch then flies in circles around him, with smoke streaming out of the back of her sky-writing broom, until Indy suffocates.

Status of the universe:

We’ve lost a hero, and our universe may be in trouble right now, but I think The Wicked Witch was partly right. It looks like we might be getting some precipitation, though it’s not snow. It’s rain. And she doesn’t have any rain gear. We’ll just have to hope it comes down in, um, buckets. Until next time, when we’ll make Hannibal Lecter and Scooby Doo cross paths.